The Rio Nunez (Rio Nuñez) or Nunez River languages constitute a pair of Niger–Congo languages, Mbulungish and Baga Mboteni. They are spoken at the mouth of the Nunez River in Guinea, West Africa. The Rio Nunez languages have been studied by

Fields Fields may refer to: Music * Fields (band), an indie rock band formed in 2006 * Fields (progressive rock band), a progressive rock band formed in 1971 * ''Fields'' (album), an LP by Swedish-based indie rock band Junip (2010) * "Fields", a song b ...

(2001),Fields, Edda. 2001. ''Rice farmers in the Rio Nunez region: A social history of agricultural technology and identity in coastal Guinea, ca. 2000 BCE to 1880 CE''. Doctoral dissertation. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania. but otherwise remain sparsely documented.

Classification

The two Rio Nunez languages do not subgroup with the

Nalu language Nalu (''nalɛ'', ''nul''; also spelled Nalou) is an Atlantic language of Guinea and Guinea-Bissau, spoken by the Nalu people, a West African people who settled the region before the arrival of the Mandinka in the 14th or 15th centuries. It is spo ...

, contrary to prior classifications. Previously, Fields had proposed a ''Coastal'' group consisting of Mbulungish, Mboteni, and Nalu that she considered to be distinct from the surrounding Mel languages. The grouping in its current scope was proposed by Güldemann (2018). The Rio Nunez languages are currently unclassified within Niger-Congo, and whether or not they are part of the

Atlantic languages The West Atlantic languages (also the Atlantic languages"West Atlantic" is the traditional term, following Diedrich Hermann Westermann; "Atlantic" is more typical in recent work, particularly since Bendor-Samuel (1989), but is also used specific ...

is also uncertain.

History

Speakers of Rio Nunez languages had cultivated African rice (''

Oryza glaberrima ''Oryza glaberrima'', commonly known as African rice, is one of the two domesticated rice species. It was first domesticated and grown in West Africa around 3,000 years ago. In agriculture, it has largely been replaced by higher-yielding Asian r ...

'') for thousands of years on the swampy coast of Guinea. Mel speakers were later arrivals on the Guinean coast, as the Proto-Mel homeland is located in the north-central highlands of

Sierra Leone Sierra Leone,)]. officially the Republic of Sierra Leone, is a country on the southwest coast of West Africa. It is bordered by Liberia to the southeast and Guinea surrounds the northern half of the nation. Covering a total area of , Sierr ...

just to the south of the Lesser Scarcies River, rather than on the coast (Fields 2008:83).Fields-Black, Edda L. 2008. ''Deep Roots: Rice Farmers in West Africa and the African Diaspora''. (Blacks in the Diaspora.) Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Today, both languages are endangered. As of 1998, fewer than 100 people spoke Baga Mboteni fluently, while Mbulungish had fewer than 500 speakers, although both speech communities had a few thousand people. The language endangerment is caused by a shift to Susu, a

Mande language The Mande languages are spoken in several countries in West Africa by the Mandé peoples and include Maninka, Mandinka, Soninke, Bambara, Kpelle, Dioula, Bozo, Mende, Susu, and Vai. There are "60 to 75 languages spoken by 30 to 40 millio ...

that is the lingua franca of coastal Guinea (Fields 2008:33-35).

Vocabulary

Basic

Comparison of basic vocabulary words of the Rio Nunez languages, and also Nalu, by Fields (2004): Comparison of basic vocabulary words of the Rio Nunez languages, and also Nalu, by Wilson (2007):Wilson, William André Auquier. 2007. ''Guinea Languages of the Atlantic group: description and internal classification''. (Schriften zur Afrikanistik, 12.) Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Vocabulary shared with

:Fields, Edda L
Before "Baga": Settlement Chronologies of the Coastal Rio Nunez Region, Earliest Times to c.1000 CE
In: ''The International Journal of African Historical Studies'', Vol. 37, No. 2 (2004), pp. 229-253. Boston University African Studies Center. Innovated vocabulary differing from

: Some Mbulungish and Mboteni innovated words that differ from Nalu and other surrounding languages (Fields 2008:74):

Cultural

A rich set of rice agriculture-related vocabulary in Rio Nunez languages has been documented by Edda L. Fields-Black (2008). Areal words borrowed from Mande languages such as Susu (Fields 2008:118, 150-151):

References

{{Niger-Congo branches *